January 22, 2008

The Shinkoku Maru is considered one of the "must dive" sites of the lagoon. The Shinkoku lists an illustrious career record, including supporting the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Rabaul, Ambon and Midway. The ship was torpedoed and sank late on February 19, 1944. This 500ft oil tanker offers divers every possible wreck diving experience, Beautiful coral growth, interesting subjects on the deck, easily penetrated superstructure and more challenging dives inside the wreck. We spent most of a day on her.

On the stern, there is an auxiliary helm telegraph used for docking. Today, an anemone and some anemonefish call it home.

Over the years, the Trukkese dive guides have made a habit of bringing certain interesting items onto the deck to create little displays of artifacts. This is great for more inexperienced divers with no intention of entering the shipwrecks of Truk, but does create greater temptation for thieves and also expose the items to faster deterioration. Here's a display of a first aid kit (see the red cross) with some random bottles placed in it:

One of the few genuine warships sunk in Truk Lagoon, the Fumizuki was under repair when the attack began with all engines in varying states of disassembly. The ship was tasked primarily as a convoy escort and had spent the prior several months on troop transport runs between Truk and Rabaul. On one of those runs, she was heavily damaged in an airstrike and retired to Truk for repairs. When the Hailstone attacks began, the crew was able to work tirelessly to get a single engine fired up and the ship underway. That evening, Fumizuki was engaged and sunk by Avengers from the USS Enterprise.

As she was underway and undergoing evasive action, the location of the shipwreck was not discovered until 1987. Today she is a very picturesque shipwreck lying upright with a slight list to port. This pic will make a spooky black and white:

The Yamagiri Maru is a combined freighter/passenger liner that is now resting on its port side in 110ft of water. Similar to the Kiyuzumi, the Yamagiri was sitting at the repair anchorage due to torpedo damage inflicted by the U.S.S. Drum two months earlier. She was sunk in multiple airstrikes from the Yorktown and Bunker Hill. Hold 5 is of particular interest, since it holds several 14in battleship gun shells along with other miscellaneous equipment. This wreck also begins to highlight a particular aspect of the Japanese strategy.....liquid courage. EVERY shipwreck is littered with thousands of beer and sake bottles. Its like the day after a bad frat bash.

Also spelled Kyosumi in some accounts. The wreck of an armed merchant cruiser lying on its port side in approximately 100 feet of water. Between November and December 1943, this ship was bombed and torpedoed three times and survived all of these attacks. She ran out of luck at Truk Lagoon. She was at the repair anchorage in Truk when she was finally sunk in the February 1944 Operation Hailstone raid on Truk by planes from the Yorktown and Enterprise.

This was our "warm up" dive with the top of the wreck at 40ft and the bottom around 100ft. As she lies on her side, penetration of the interior of the ship can be a little disorienting, but the holds are very accessible, though mostly empty.

As with all of the shipwrecks in Truk, we will see a mixture of beauty, ugliness, destruction and new life. The ships and men of the Japanese fleet anchored here met their end in unimaginable horror and flames. They now hopefully rest at peace and have become the foundation for new life in the deep blue waters of the lagoon.

At the southern end of Palau lies a small five square mile island named Peliliu. Today, 700 Palauans call it home, but in 1944, 11,000 Japanese soldiers and airmen were resident on the island. Palau was a major strategic base for Imperial Japan in the western Pacific and Peleliu housed the primary airfield commanding the airspace in this area of the Pacific.

However, as the tides of war shifted to the Allies advantage, Palau (as with Truk) became another target in the island-hopping campaign of the United States military. Peleliu was supposed to be taken in three days......

It took two months. Over 2,000 Americans and 10,000 Japanese died in some of the bloodiest fighting in the war in an area that has become immortalized as Bloody Nose Ridge

Many say the Americans could have bombed and bypassed Palau on the way to the Philippines, but the airfield was considered a strategic priority by certain military leaders.